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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24008479">it's bloody and raw, but I swear it is sweet</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/gutsforgarters/pseuds/gutsforgarters'>gutsforgarters</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Walking Dead (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cunnilingus, Episode: s04e12 Still, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, First Time, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Menstrual Sex, Menstruation Kink, Older Man/Younger Woman, Unsafe Sex</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 22:56:01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>13,995</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24008479</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/gutsforgarters/pseuds/gutsforgarters</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Daryl's never let a little blood stop him from anything, so, honestly, Beth shouldn't be all that surprised by this turn of events.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Daryl Dixon/Beth Greene</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>62</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>226</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/kattyshack/gifts">kattyshack</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Summary by Maj, who graciously allowed me to use it in exchange for the inclusion of a certain line of filthy dialogue. You'll probably know it when you see it. </p>
<p>Title from "Angel of Small Death and the Codeine Scene" by Hozier. Because I think I'm funny.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Beth’s first waking thought is that she must’ve wet the bed.</p><p>Okay, no, that’s not quite true. Her <em>first </em>waking thought is something more along the lines of, <em>Where the hell am I? </em>Not the moonshine shack. The moonshine shack didn’t have any beds that she saw, and she’s definitely lying on top of a mattress, so where—?</p><p>She doesn’t even complete that train of thought before the answer comes to her. Woodsmoke. Under the cloyingly sweet stench of alcohol and the sour tang of her own stale sweat, woodsmoke clings to her skin and hair like an earthy perfume. She’s been around enough fires, both before and after the end of the world, to know that it’s the kind of smell that lingers long after the flames have been put out.</p><p>They burned it down. Probably kind of stupid of them to light their shelter on fire, but it’d felt right at the time, and it’d felt right after. Anyway, they obviously found someplace else to stay for the rest of the night. Which brings her back to the question of <em>where the hell</em>.</p><p>Beth’s obviously never been hungover before, but the heavy reek of alcohol slapped her in the face and brought her throbbing headache and greasy nausea to the surface, and she knows that’s what this is. She’s afraid to open her eyes for fear of making the headache even worse, but there’s not a lot of light filtering in through her shut eyelids, so maybe it won’t be so bad.</p><p>Yeah, okay. It is kinda bad. But not as bad as it could be, probably. And she was right about there not being much light, because the curtains on the window are sealed shut. They’re beige and made out of some kinda stiff-looking cloth, and they strike her as weirdly impersonal.</p><p>So does the rest of the room, or what she can see of the room without turning her head too much. Brown shag carpeting. Little table and chair by the window. Some abstract art print hanging on the wall at an angle, like it’s one stiff breeze away from falling off its nail.</p><p>Okay. Yeah. She remembers now.</p><p>They’re in a one-story motel off what used to be a highway, the kind of place that was dying long before the world decided to slash its own wrists. The kind of place that made most of its money off of people who were too poor to even rent a shitty apartment.</p><p>There was a walker in the room next door. Daryl killed it. But then Beth threw up at the smell, and after holding back her hair until she was finished, he brought her in here. Didn’t carry her, but her arm was fastened around his neck and his was around her waist, and even though she felt like shit warmed over, she remembers registering the heat of his heavy palm on her hip as pleasant.</p><p>She doesn’t remember anything beyond that, though, so she must’ve passed out before they got to the bed.</p><p>Thinking about throwing up makes her stomach twinge, and she swallows several times before taking a big risk and turning her head against the flat, musty pillow. Yeah, there’s Daryl, a bulky lump under the blankets, quilt drawn so far over his head she can’t even see his hair. His side’s moving steadily up and down, though, and she can hear him breathing now that she concentrates on listening.</p><p>He’s here. He’s alive. They both are.</p><p>She blinks hard and grinds the heels of her palms against her throbbing eyeballs. She still wants to lie down and cry—and, hey, she’s already accomplished step one—but she’s not sorry that she’s with Daryl, either. Least of all after last night.</p><p>She doesn’t think she’s ever connected with anyone on the level she did with Daryl. They’re so different, but now she realizes that they’re also…not. There was a kinship there, and she wants him to hurry and wake up so she can talk to him and make sure that she wasn’t imagining it, that it wasn’t just the moonshine that made her light up when they stood shoulder to shoulder and flipped off a burning house.</p><p>She smiles to herself and immediately regrets it, because even her facial muscles hurt. She groans softly and saws her legs, restless and agitated but unwilling to get out of bed, and <em>that’s</em> when she notices that her underwear is wet.</p><p>
  <em>Oh. My God.</em>
</p><p>It’s funny. She’s survived so much—survived things it didn’t make <em>sense</em> for her to survive, but like she told Daryl, she <em>made it</em>—so she thinks it’s some kind of ironic, that mortification will be the thing that finally kills her.</p><p>Bad enough she was so drunk she wet the bed. But to wet the bed while Daryl was <em>in it with her</em>, that just might be more than she can cope with, and she’s coped with <em>a lot</em>.</p><p>But. Wait a minute. She shifts, careful about it so she doesn’t wake Daryl, and pats around the mattress. It doesn’t<em> feel</em> like it soaked through her pants and onto the bed, so maybe just a little came out, like when you laugh too hard and it puts pressure on your bladder. Sure, she doesn’t have a change of underwear, so that’s gonna be its own problem, but if she had to, she could probably go commando. She’s pretty sure Daryl does, which is something she usually tries not to think too hard about.</p><p>Maybe it’s not urine. Maybe she had a wet dream she doesn’t remember—that’d be a whole ’nother kind of embarrassing, but so long as she wasn’t making any <em>noises </em>or anything, she’d take it over peeing herself. She’s gotta be sure, though, so she shoves her hand past her waistband—doesn’t even have to undo her snap, because she’s already lost more weight than she should—and sticks her hand in her underwear, fingers snagging in her pubic hair and dipping into the crux of her labia.</p><p>Yeah. It’s definitely wet down there, but it feels too thick to be urine, too viscous. She drags her hand out of her pants and holds her fingers in front of her face, squinting in the dim early morning light that’s filtering in through the cracks in the curtains.</p><p>It’s not urine. But it’s not come, either. It’s too dark to be either of those things.</p><p>
  <em>Damn it.</em>
</p><p>Beth lurches out of bed, brain sloshing around in her skull, guts compressing like they’re being squeezed by an invisible fist, and stumbles for the door that she <em>prays</em> leads to the bathroom. She wasn’t thinking about it—with everything that just happened, why would she?—and if she <em>had</em> thought about it, she would’ve figured that it’d be late, or not come at all, now that she’s not eating regularly.</p><p>She must’ve mistaken her period cramps for hunger pangs.</p><p>The door’s halfway open, and she pushes it the rest of the way forward—it really <em>is</em> the bathroom, so at least there’s that—smacking at the light switch on sheer instinct and not understanding at first why it’s not working.</p><p>But, right. This place isn’t the prison. If it even has generators, they’re probably long dried up.</p><p>Her hand drops back to her side. She inhales shakily, then nudges the door shut.</p><p>She squats on the toilet and fumbles off her boots, then stands back up and unsnaps her jeans, pushes them down her legs. She grabs her underwear’s waistband and holds it out from her body so she can see the crotch.</p><p>She doesn’t know why she does it. She already saw the proof of what her body’s doing on her fingers. And there it is again, even more of it, smeared thick and dark and tacky across dingy white cotton. She can smell it, musky and metallic in a way that’s always reminded her of dead fish sold in supermarkets, and if she can smell it, so will the walkers. It’ll draw them to her like chum in the water.</p><p>The bathroom door creaks, and Beth snaps her underwear back into place, cursing herself for being stupid and leaving her knife on the floor where it’s hooked to her pants—but she relaxes when she sees that it’s Daryl who’s hovering at the threshold and not a walker, or worse, a living stranger with violence on the brain.</p><p>She relaxes, and then she tenses all over again when she realizes she’s half naked. You’d think she wouldn’t have it in her to be modest anymore, but apparently, she does.</p><p>“Uh.” Daryl blinks. The hand he’s got braced on the door frame twitches like he wants to clench it into a fist. “Sorry. Thought you might be throwin’ up in here.”</p><p>“Uh, no.” Beth folds her arms over her chest and chafes her palms against her biceps. It’s too drafty in here to be standing around without any pants on. “I think I got that outta my system last night.”</p><p>“Uh-huh.” Daryl shifts like he’s going to leave now that he knows she doesn’t need someone to hold her hair back while she vomits up mud snake, but then his eyes flicker and narrow into a frown. His nostrils flare. “The hell happened?”</p><p>“Huh?”</p><p>He reaches out for her, then stops, hand hovering in midair. She wonders if he’s thinking about how he grabbed her yesterday. “You’re bleedin’.”</p><p>“What—?” Oh. Right. The blood on her fingers. She uncrosses her arms and curls her fingers against her palms so he can’t see them. “No, I’m—I’m not bleeding. I mean, I’m not hurt or anything.”</p><p>Daryl’s starting to look pissed off. “Yeah? If it ain’t yours, then whose is it? ’Cause it sure as hell ain’t mine. You been out killin’ walkers whiles I was sleepin’?”</p><p>She can’t tell if he’s being sarcastic or not. Probably, because even hungover, there’s no sneaking past a sleeping Daryl without waking him up. Case in point.</p><p>“<em>No</em>—no, it’s mine. I’m, uh.” Jesus, why is she so embarrassed? It’s not like Daryl isn’t aware that she menstruates. Not like he hasn’t gone out on supply runs to pick up pads and tampons for her and the other women. “I’m on my period.”</p><p>She says that last bit very quietly, but Daryl must hear it anyway, because he says, “Oh.” Just that.</p><p>But, well. At least that’s over with. “Could you.” She licks her lips; they feel chapped. “Could you give me a minute?”</p><p>It’s hard to tell, but she thinks Daryl’s face turns red. He nods, stilted, and shuffles out of the bathroom, pulling the door closed behind him.</p><p>Beth screws her eyes shut and takes a steadying breath, then turns toward the limescale-covered sink, not expecting much. And, yeah, when she twists the faucet, no water comes out. She looks around, growing more and more agitated until she spots a stack of white towels piled on top of the toilet’s tank. She grabs a washcloth and scrapes the blood off her fingers as best she can, then takes another, folds it in half, and stuffs it into her underwear.</p><p>It’ll have to do.</p><p>She wastes another couple of seconds trying to pick blood out from under her nails, gives up, then grabs her things and heads into the main room on grudging feet.</p><p>Daryl’s sitting up against the headboard in the king-sized bed, gnawing at his thumbnail the way he does. His eyes flick to Beth, and she halts halfway between the bathroom and the bed, feeling exquisitely awkward. She knows she looks awful: hair a veritable rat’s nest, lips chapped and flaking from dehydration, her bare legs all pasty white and sprouting itchy dark blond hair. And that’s not even getting into the crotch of her panties, lumpy and distended with her makeshift menstrual pad.</p><p>She also knows that Daryl doesn’t give a shit about how she looks. And frankly, she’s too tired and achy to care all that much about it, either.</p><p>“Hey,” she says, and Daryl drops his hand into his lap. Nods. “Uh, sorry about that. I know it’s pretty gross.”</p><p>She doesn’t know why she’s apologizing. Maggie would say that she shouldn’t apologize for a fact of biology. And what with the rotting dead people wandering around outside and all, she thinks menstruation probably rates pretty low on the gross-out scale by comparison.</p><p>Maybe she’s saying things just to say them.</p><p>Daryl shrugs. “S’just blood.”</p><p>Yeah. He’s right. And he’s used to blood, isn’t he? So is she.</p><p>“I’ll head out in a little bit,” he tells her. “See if I can find you some stuff.”</p><p>Beth swallows thickly. She doesn’t want him to leave her. “You don’t want me to come with you?”</p><p>“Not with you bleedin’ all over the damn place, I don’t.”</p><p>It’s stupid, because she was just thinking to herself that she couldn’t go out like this, but hearing as much from Daryl still makes her flinch.</p><p>“Sorry,” she says again, whispering it this time, and Daryl frowns.</p><p>“The hell you sorry for? Ain’t like you did it on purpose.” </p><p>Him saying that doesn’t make her feel any <em>physically</em> better—her head still throbs, her abdomen still aches, and the inside of her mouth still tastes like a bar floor—but it eases her anxiety a great deal, enough for her to smile at him in earnest.</p><p>“Yeah. You’re right. And, uh. Thanks. For offering to go out.”</p><p>Daryl tosses his head dismissively. “Don’t thank me yet. Don’t even know if I’ll actually find anythin’.”</p><p>It hurts to roll her eyes, but Beth does it anyway. “It’s the thought that counts, remember?”</p><p>“Not anymore, it don’t.” She opens her mouth to argue with him, but she gets distracted when he scoots over on the bed till the space closest to her’s opened up. “C’mon, Greene. Lie down ’fore ya fall down.”</p><p>Beth’s guts give another squeeze, but this time it has nothing to do with her hangover or her cramps. He’d probably deny it if she were to draw attention to it, but she knows why he moved over the way he did. He did it so she wouldn’t have to circle the bed to the spot she’d woken up in. He did it so she wouldn’t have to walk as far while feeling as crappy as she is.</p><p>He’s a sweet guy. She knows he doesn’t think so, but he is.</p><p>She drops her boots and pants by the nightstand and climbs into bed, lying on her stomach on top of the covers and burying her face in the pillow. She tries not to be too conspicuous about inhaling, but this side of the bed’s drenched in Daryl, and her nostrils flare instinctively. His pillow smells like booze, too, but it also smells like sweat and body odor, and you’d think that neither of those things would be all that appealing, but it’s funny, what living in a world full of the roaming dead can do to you. After a while, anything that smells like a living person smells good by comparison.</p><p>Daryl in <em>particular</em> smells good, or at least he does to her. She spent a lot of last night just wanting to plant her face in his neck and lap up the sweat trails on his throat, which kind of alarms her now that she’s mostly sober. What alarms her even more is the tug just below her navel when she thinks back to it.</p><p>She’s never wanted to <em>lick</em> a guy before. Is that normal?</p><p>She groans into the pillow, muffled, but Daryl’s sharp ears catch it anyway, just like they’d caught her mumbling back in the bathroom.</p><p>“Y’alright?”</p><p>Crap. Beth twists the blanket between her fingers and rolls her cheek against the pillow to look up at him. He’s looking back at her, mouth compressed in a frown.</p><p>She tries to play it off. “Aside from the obvious? Yeah. Guess I’m alright as I can be.”</p><p>Daryl shifts his legs and crosses them at the ankles. Picks at his fingers. “Should prob’ly head out now.”</p><p>Beth lifts her head off the pillow. “No,” she says, a little too fiercely. “No, stay.”</p><p>Daryl’s eyebrows hike up, disappearing behind his bangs, and Beth’s cheeks prickle. Look at her, bossing around a man twice her age like she’s got the right to. She certainly never would’ve had the nerve to do something like that <em>before</em>, least of all with someone who exudes <em>don’t-fuck-with-me</em> the way Daryl does.</p><p>But, right. Like she said, that was <em>before</em>. Before he hiked through the Georgia woods just to get her a drink. Before he broke down and cried in front of her and let her hold him with her cheek pressed to his shoulder, getting her own tears all over his shirt.</p><p>Before she realized that, in a lot of ways, he’s just as young as she is.</p><p>She licks her lips again, convulsively, and longs distantly for Chapstick. She’s still embarrassed, but she can’t look away from him, either.</p><p>“Um,” she says, belatedly remembering her manners. “Please. Just for a little bit.”</p><p>It’s Daryl who looks away. She’s not surprised. “Don’t see the point,” he mumbles, but he doesn’t get up. He stays because she asked him to.</p><p>Because she told him to.</p><p>She untangles her fingers from the blankets and folds them against her palm. Her soured stomach feels lighter, suddenly, with something like giddiness. He stayed when she asked him to, even though it had to go against his brutally pragmatic nature. What else would he do if she asked? She knows what she <em>wants</em> to ask, and it’s for something it wouldn’t have even occurred to her to want before last night. Even after she got to know him a little better last winter, and then at the prison, she wouldn’t’ve thought of it, let alone done it. But now—</p><p>“Hey, uh. Could you lie down with me for a little while?”</p><p>Daryl eyeballs her. “Am lyin’ down,” he says, rough and dismissive, but she thinks his cheeks might’ve turned a little red again, too.</p><p>She should probably drop it. She doesn’t. “No, you’re sittin’ up.”</p><p>His face twists into a scowl. “Quit mouthin’ off.”</p><p>“I’m not,” she says, even though she kind of is. “It’s just. I usually use a hot water bottle on my cramps, but we don’t have any of those, and you’re. You’re really warm, so I was wondering if we could…” Her face heats up. She looks at her fingers, picking at a loose thread in the pillowcase. “Y’know.”</p><p>He doesn’t say anything, and Beth stews in the ensuing oppressive silence. God, this man has stood watch while she pissed and shat in the woods, and now he’s seen her own menstrual blood on her fingers, yet somehow, she was never as embarrassed by any of that as she is by this, now that she’s asked Daryl Dixon to <em>cuddle with her.</em></p><p>She shouldn’t’ve. She shouldn’t’ve asked. She doesn’t know everything about the place where Daryl grew up, but she knows enough. She definitely knows that he doesn’t like to touch or be touched, that her dad and Rick were just about the only people who could get away with as much as clapping him on the shoulder without getting their heads torn clear off.</p><p>But. But she hugged him, back at the prison. Hugged him again when he cried. He let her do it both times. He did.</p><p>But hugging someone while you’re both standing up’s different, isn’t it? It’s different than lying in bed together with your limbs all intertwined. It’s nowhere near as intimate, although Beth personally thinks that it doesn’t get much more<em> intimate</em> than holding a person while they cry.</p><p>Still, though. This is probably too much to ask of him. It’s not fair of her. She’s being selfish.</p><p>The bedsprings creak, and Beth opens her eyes, not remembering when she’d shut them. Daryl’s scooting closer, not looking at her, and now he’s lying down on his back, hands fisted against his stomach, face turned toward the water-stained ceiling and the dusty fan. He exhales—he was holding his breath—and his bicep presses up against her sternum, between her breasts.</p><p>He’s solid. She already knew that, but this feels different somehow. He’s solid, and he radiates warmth like a space heater, and she doesn’t waste another second scooting closer till she’s pressed flush to his side. She doesn’t sling an arm over him, even though she wants to. She tucks her fists beneath her chin, hesitates, and then presses her forehead to his naked shoulder. The frayed edges of his severed sleeve tickle her eyelids. She breathes out.</p><p>“Happy now?” Daryl grumbles, and Beth’s lips curl into a smile. She nods against his shoulder.</p><p>“Guess this’ll do,” she says, teasing, and Daryl snorts so hard it momentarily rocks his body into hers. “Thanks.”</p><p>“Don’t mention it,” he says in the tones of someone who really <em>doesn’t</em> want her to mention it.</p><p>He really shouldn’t’ve expected her to display that much restraint, though. “What?” she says, smile blooming into a grin. “Never cuddled with anyone before?”</p><p>“Ain’t fuckin’ <em>cuddling</em>,” he retorts, his voice rumbling in her own chest cavity. She thinks he’ll leave it at that, but then he says, real quiet like he half-hopes she won’t hear, “Nah. Never.”</p><p>Beth doesn’t know why she’s surprised. She already knew that he didn’t like to be touched, so it stands to reason that he wouldn’t’ve held someone else like that before, but. She doesn’t know. He’s old enough, isn’t he? Surely he would’ve dated at least one person somewhere along the line, or had a one-night stand and held them after. She never heard about him hooking up with anybody at the prison, but it’s like she said. He’s well into his thirties. It had to’ve happened at least once by now.</p><p>But Daryl’s not a liar. He’s definitely never lied to <em>her</em>. If he says he’s never done this, then he’s never done this.</p><p>“Oh,” she says quietly. She knows she messed up here. She also knows it’ll piss him off if she says sorry. “Okay.” And since she can’t say sorry, she tries to lighten the mood, goes back to teasing him. “Guess that makes me your first, huh?”</p><p>Yeah. Teasing. Also treading dangerously close to <em>flirting. </em>Her heart sticks to the walls of her throat while she waits for him to answer.</p><p>He snorts again. His nose brushes the top of her head. “Shut up.”</p><p>Beth hides her smile against his shoulder, but she knows he can probably feel it. Her fingers are starting to go numb from staying curled against her palms, but she doesn’t know where else to put her hands. Getting Daryl to lie down with her at all was a miracle, and she doubts she’s due for another already. She probably shouldn’t push it.</p><p>But, well. If Beth still cared about what she <em>shouldn’t do</em>, she wouldn’t’ve drunk moonshine out of a dusty glass and committed arson for fun. She’s not the timid little girl Daryl never bothered to notice back on the farm. She’s just as scared now as she was then, but she’s used to living with fear now, and she’s not gonna let it paralyze her.</p><p>So very, very slowly, like she’s coaxing a spooked horse or approaching a stray cat, like maybe he won’t even notice if she does it careful enough, she uncurls one hand from beneath her chin and creeps it across his chest, fingertips dragging over worn flannel as her palm settles against his heart.</p><p>He’s not breathing. Or, he <em>stopped</em> breathing when he felt her hand on him. But Beth doesn’t retreat. She just keeps her hand there, her touch light and unoppressive, and eventually, she feels his chest rise and fall beneath her.</p><p>He didn’t spook. She didn’t mess up. For now, they’re good.</p><p>She has to keep this light, though. So, knowing that he’s most in his comfort zone when he’s annoyed, she says, “Are we cuddling yet?”</p><p>“Jesus fuckin’ Christ,” he says, and she smiles. “Keep buggin’ me, Greene, and I’mma kick your ass outta bed.”</p><p>“That’s no way to treat a lady.”</p><p>“You ain’t a lady, you’re a pain in my ass.”</p><p>“Yeah, well, I’ll kick<em> your</em> ass if you keep talkin’ to me like that. How’s that for bein’ a <em>pain</em>?”</p><p>“Jesus,” he says again, but she thinks he might be laughing a little this time. “Get real fuckin’ pissy when you’re hungover, don’t you?”</p><p>She’s been trying not to fidget, but she has to do <em>something</em>, so she fiddles with the topmost button on his shirt, hanging loose by a string, and he lets her. “Doesn’t everybody?” </p><p>He shrugs, and the movement pushes his thick bicep deeper into the hollow between her breasts. She tries not to notice that. “Everybody I ever met.”</p><p>“What about you? You don’t seem any pissier than usual.”</p><p>He growls low in his throat, and the hair on the nape of Beth’s neck stands straight up as an intrigued tingle zips down her spine. “Girl, I swear to God.” </p><p>“Okay, jeez. Sorry.” </p><p>Daryl shifts again, but he’s not shrugging. His arm was folded awkwardly against his side, shoved up against Beth’s chest, but now he’s pushing it underneath of her, bicep tensing as he presumably works the feeling back into his fingers. Beth holds very still, trying not to so much as breathe too loudly, then all but bites her tongue in half to keep from making a startled noise when she feels Daryl’s arm curve around her. His hand hovers for a second like he doesn’t know what to do with it before flopping onto her shoulder, not quite cupping it.</p><p>Jesus.<em> Jesus</em>, okay. She should probably stop freaking out before he picks up on her internal spiral.</p><p>“I gotta teach you how to swear for real,” he says, like this isn’t even happening, like things are normal, but his voice tumbles out of his mouth all husky, and she knows he’s as painfully, exquisitely aware of what’s going on as she is. “That<em> jeez</em> shit’s gotta go. Ain’t nobody here who’s gonna spank you for cussin’.” </p><p>Beth almost <em>does </em>swear then as every muscle in her body pulls into an agonized knot, and none more so than the muscles in her cunt, seizing up tight and clamping down on nothing. It’s not a period cramp. She knows it’s not a period cramp, just like she knows that the wetness slicking her underwear isn’t just blood and uterine lining.</p><p><em>Jesus help me</em>, Beth thinks, but if the fall of the prison and the loss of her family wasn’t enough to hammer home the fact that the Lord’s not on her side, Daryl exacerbating matters by dragging his hand down her bicep certainly does the job.</p><p><em>God</em>. She tries and fails not to shiver at the catch of rough calluses against her skin, and Daryl must chalk her tremors up to it being too chilly in here or something, because then he drags his hand back <em>up</em> her arm like he’s trying to chafe some warmth back into her skin. And Beth<em> is</em> feeling pretty warm now, so in a way, it does work.</p><p>“Y’okay?” he asks, and Beth nods and hums wordlessly, not trusting herself to speak. She doesn’t want him hearing the tremor that’s sure to be in her voice. “Don’t wanna get under the blankets or nothin’?”</p><p>“M’fine,” Beth mumbles, because, yeah, she doesn’t want her voice giving anything away, but she also knows that <em>Daryl </em>will know that something’s up if she gets too quiet.</p><p>And aside from the fact that she’s wet for reasons that have nothing to do with her period, she <em>is</em> fine, or at least better than she was. Wanting to use his body heat to soothe her own cramps aside, it feels good to be held by someone she cares about—good enough that she can almost forget her pounding headache and the sluggish drip of blood into her itchy makeshift pad.</p><p>She’s gonna have to let Daryl leave soon if she wants even half a chance at finding some real pads, or even tampons. She never liked using the latter—hated having to fish them out of herself with clumsy, blood-slick fingers, hated having to worry about things like toxic shock—but she can’t deny their practical uses. Walkers have a harder time smelling your blood if it gets absorbed by a tube of cotton before it can escape your body, so long as you’re careful to change it out before it can leak too much. These days, tampons are worth more than gold and almost as much as guns, because gold can’t save your life.</p><p>“Should get goin’ soon,” Daryl mumbles in an uncanny echo of her thoughts, but he doesn’t make any moves to get up. If anything, he settles in, losing some of the tension in his body, hand sweeping a path down her arm again, except. Except this time, he doesn’t stop at her elbow.</p><p>His hand. His hand settles on her hip, fingers hooking over the too-pronounced jut of her hipbone to touch the waistband of her underwear, palm grazing the swell of her ass. Beth breathes in hard through her nose, clenching all over again from her fingers to her cunt. She’s not gonna survive this. Everything she’s been through, and it’s gonna be Daryl Dixon who kills her completely on accident.</p><p>His thumb fits itself against the dip of her waist and rubs back and forth, and Beth has to tell herself he’s not doing it on purpose, and if he is, that there’s nothing suggestive about it. He’s just following the same instinct that compelled him to hold her hair while she puked. He takes care of his people; that’s just who he is.</p><p>But his hand on her hip feels even better than it did last night when he half carried her into this room, huge and heavy and hot, and Beth just wants to flop onto her back and drag it between her legs, plead with him to fuck away her cramps with his thick, capable fingers. Lick the salt off his neck while he does it and bite him where his pulse throbs closest to his skin when she comes.</p><p>Her legs spasm, and she squeezes them together, tries to hold them still. Her hand slips to where his shirt gapes open entirely of its own volition, and she soaks up his body heat skin-to-skin, the sparse, wiry hair on his chest tickling her.</p><p>The hand on her hip twitches, then holds her tighter. There’s no denying it; he’s definitely touching her ass now, even incidentally. The point is that it’s happening.</p><p>Beth’s pulse throbs in her throat and her wrists and her bleeding cunt. She’s starting to feel stiff from holding herself so still, so she thinks, <em>Screw it</em>, and stretches, breasts poking Daryl in the side, the flat of her pelvis coming up flush with his hip. He makes a tiny sound in the back of his throat, this little grunt that she probably wouldn’t’ve heard at all if she wasn’t so close to him to begin with, and her fingers curl against his sternum, nails digging into his skin.</p><p>She thinks about his hand burning into her hip. She thinks about what he said earlier, about how no one would spank her for cussing. She thinks about wanting things that good Christian girls aren’t supposed to want, least of all from men with rough voices and rougher hands who’re twice her age.</p><p>She never wanted that kind of thing <em>before</em>. Never wanted it from Jimmy or Zach or any of the other boys and men she nursed fleeting crushes on. But she wants it <em>now</em>, she realizes with a rush of blood to her head. She wants Daryl to sit up and yank her over his lap and pin her in place with one heavy hand on the nape of her neck while he uses the other to smack her bare ass till it stings and turns red. She wants <em>that</em>.</p><p>Would he give it to her, is the question. Just yesterday, she would’ve immediately filed that one under <em>No Way in Hell</em>, but that was <em>yesterday</em>, wasn’t it? Yesterday, he hadn’t yet held her against his side while they lay in bed together with his hand on her hip. He hadn’t made that <em>noise</em> when she moved against him. And<em> she </em>hadn’t all but copped a feel off of him.</p><p><em>Please</em>, she thinks, and she doesn’t know if she’s thinking it at him or praying to God. Just. <em>Please</em>.</p><p>She moves slowly again, the way she did when she first put her hand on his chest, as she unsticks her sweaty thighs and nudges her toes against his ankle. Her toes, then her foot, then her calf overlapping his knee, and finally her thigh as she slings it over his hip, over the flat of his pelvis, cunt tucked snug against the bony jut of his hip.</p><p>Daryl inhales sharply, and he doesn’t exhale. Not that Beth can hear.</p><p>She’s not doing too well on the breathing front, herself. She’s not, because she’s only had two boyfriends but that’s enough, isn’t it, enough to recognize what she’s feeling against her thigh, stiff as a rod and burning hot through worn denim.</p><p>He’s hard. </p><p>Beth’s guts squirm like a nest of snakes even as her body goes limp like she’s playing dead, disbelieving arousal flushing through her system and rendering her dumbstruck, useless, nothing but a framework of pulsing nerves screaming to be touched, worked over, licked and spanked and fucked. Anything, fucking <em>anything</em>, just <em>touch her goddammit</em>.</p><p>That’s the fantasy. The reality is that she knows Daryl, so she knows she’s made a mistake. She would’ve been surprised if he <em>had</em> flipped her over and stuck his tongue in her mouth, and she’s absolutely <em>not</em> surprised when he freezes underneath of her like a deer in the glaring path of headlights, breathing again but too quickly and too shallowly, the hand on her hip turning to stone.</p><p>She should probably climb off of him now, but she can’t. She’s frozen, too, absolutely and utterly <em>mortified</em>.</p><p>Shit. <em>Shit</em>—</p><p>“<em>Shit</em>.”</p><p>If it weren’t for Daryl’s hot, stale breath buffeting her cheek, she probably wouldn’t’ve been able to tell which of them said that out loud. And then he says it again, knuckles biting into her side as he clenches his hand into a fist.</p><p>“Shit.” He’s trembling, as far as Beth can tell, from head to foot. She’s never felt him shaking like this, not even when she held him while he cried. He sounds a little bit like he might start hyperventilating. “Shit, Beth, I’m sorry. I fuckin’—I don’t—”</p><p>No. <em>No</em>. She doesn’t want him sounding like that, like he’s ashamed of himself and what his body’s doing, like he’s somehow in the wrong. Like he’s taking advantage of her when, really, the argument could be made that <em>she’s</em> the one who’s taking advantage of <em>him</em>.</p><p>And she doesn’t, doesn’t, <em>doesn’t</em> want him pulling the same maneuver he did yesterday, when he lashed out at her like a wounded animal because he was angry and scared and wanted to push her away. Because that’s what he was doing, when he said all those awful things. He was trying to make her hate him because he didn’t think he deserved comfort or affection. Because he didn’t know how to deal with either of those things.</p><p>He doesn’t know how to deal with this, either. She can tell that much just from his body language. He doesn’t know how to deal with it, and he’s gonna react one of two ways: push her off of him and retreat into mortified silence, never speaking to her again unless he has to, or push her off of him and say more nasty things to her so she’ll hate him too much to want to try this again.</p><p>She can’t let that happen. Any of it. But she doesn’t know how to stop it from happening either, and—and—</p><p>And her brain just. Shuts down. That’s the only plausible explanation for what she does next, because if she was thinking clearly at all, she wouldn’t risk making an awkward situation worse by surging forward to cover Daryl’s mouth with hers.</p><p>But that’s exactly what she does.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Beth could count the number of people she’s kissed on one hand and not even need all five fingers to do it, but you’d think she’s never kissed anyone at all, the way she’s kissing Daryl now. She does it clumsily, lips bumping against his teeth before she molds them to his, pushing her tongue into his mouth too fast and too soon, as sloppy and overeager as a hungry puppy. Her fingers snag in his collar and <em>pull</em>, nearly snapping that top button the rest of the way off as she gropes for his cheek with her other hand, his stubble rasping like sandpaper against her palm.</p><p>Stubble. She’s not used to that. She’s used to smooth-cheeked young boys who haven’t yet lost all of their baby fat, who persist in shaving every day even though they don’t really need to because they want so badly to be thought of as grown up, to be taken seriously, and Beth can’t even fault them for it because she wants that too. She wants<em> Daryl</em> to take her seriously. Because she’s young, yeah, and more aware of this fact than ever now that her chances of living past twenty have shrunk to a depressingly low percentage, but she’s still a grown woman—she deserves to call herself that after everything she’s been through—and she knows what she wants, and what she wants is this. Him.</p><p>But he’s not kissing her back. He’s not shoving her off of him, but he’s not kissing her back, either, and that’s almost as bad. In a way, it’s worse.</p><p>Shame grabs her by the hair and wrenches her head back on her neck, breaking the seal of their mouths with an obscene pop and leaving her gasping for breath even though she hadn’t been kissing him all that long. The hand that was on her hip slid the rest of the way down to her ass when she half flung herself on top of him, and it’s still balled up in a fist. She can feel the muscles in his wrist trembling from the strain of keeping his fingers clenched so tight for so long. He’s pulled taut as a bowstring in the moment before the kill.</p><p>His eyes are screwed shut, jaw so tense it’s a wonder she managed to fit her tongue in his mouth at all.</p><p>He hadn’t wanted her to kiss him. He hadn’t. He’s hard, sure, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything, and Beth should’ve remembered that. It was nothing more than an involuntary response to her rubbing up against him, and it doesn’t mean he wants her the way she wants him.</p><p>She messed up. Oh, God, she messed up, and she doesn’t know how to <em>fix it</em>.</p><p>Except. Okay. An apology would probably be a good start.</p><p>“I’m.” His eyelids flutter when she talks, two narrow slits of blue gleaming out at her from beneath his lashes. She should probably get off of him, but she’s numb with panic, and she couldn’t so much as twitch her pinky finger right now if her life depended on it. “I’m sorry, Daryl. I shouldn’t’ve—”</p><p>He opens his eyes all the way when she cuts herself off, but that doesn’t really make her feel any better, since he probably only does it so he can glare at her properly. His fist clenches impossibly tighter, knuckles grinding into the meat of her ass.</p><p>“Shouldn’t’ve <em>what</em>?” he wants to know, as if it isn’t obvious. But then, he’s good at being cruel when he wants to be, not that she doesn’t deserve it in this particular instance. If humiliating herself even more is what it’s gonna take to make it up to him, then fine. She’ll do it.</p><p>“Shouldn’t’ve kissed you,” she finishes in a whisper, the words catching like brambles in her throat. Her fingers are still twisted up in Daryl’s collar. She’d let him go if she could.</p><p>She <em>wants </em>to let him go, wants to put some distance between them, especially now that it looks like her apology’s only managed to piss him off even more. She’s not surprised, but it still hurts, disappointment hitting her like a roundhouse kick to the stomach.</p><p>“What the fuck, Greene?” His hand falls away from her, and he levers himself up into a sitting position, forcing Beth to scramble back to keep their noses from colliding, her body finally doing what she tells it to now that the damage has already been done.</p><p>Daryl points a finger at her, right at her heart like he’s aiming to kill. It’s shaking, that finger, and so is his voice when he says, “I don’t give a shit how bored you are, you best quit fuckin’ with me if you know what’s good for you.”</p><p><em>What</em>? Beth’s brain scrambles. Is he—is he really implying—?</p><p>No, yeah. He is. He<em> is</em>, and that <em>pisses her off</em>.</p><p>When she talks, her voice shakes, too. It’s shaking with <em>outrage</em>. “I’m not—I’m not<em> fuckin’</em> with you, Daryl, Jesus. I wouldn’t do that.”</p><p>Daryl’s mouth twists to one side like he wants to spit, and she’s only surprised that he doesn’t. “Yeah?”</p><p>She wants to pull her hair out. She just might. At the end of her rope and all out of alternatives, she blurts, “Didn’t I just say I wasn’t? I wasn’t messing with you, okay, I <em>wanted</em> to kiss you.”</p><p>Daryl’s jaw unhinges, mouth popping open to flash the edge of teeth and a glimpse of tongue. He looks a little bit like she just slugged him across the face.</p><p>He snaps his mouth back shut. Swallows a couple times. Says, stilted and halting like he’s trying to remember how to string words together, “Then what—<em>shit</em>—what the fuck’d you apologize for, huh?” </p><p>Is he serious? Her fingers snarl in the split ends of her hair like she’s gonna pull it out for real. She says, unsteady with mounting hysteria, “Because I didn’t <em>ask</em> first.”</p><p>Daryl appears to process this. “Oh.” His hands twitch against his thighs, thumb worrying at a worn patch in his jeans. “That, uh. That it?”</p><p>And, look. Beth’s still hungover. She’s crampy and bloated and bleeding, and she <em>gives up</em>, okay? She’s done trying to make any sense out of what’s going on here, so she just says, exasperated and <em>exhausted</em>, “Uh. Yeah?”</p><p>Daryl exhales shakily. He sucks his bottom lip into his mouth and nods, once—more to himself than to her, she thinks. Almost like he’s come to some kind of decision.</p><p>She doesn’t have long to wonder what that decision was, though, because she finds out roughly two seconds later when he wraps his big hand around the base of her neck and hauls her forward into a kiss.</p><p>And this time. This time, Beth’s the one who’s too shocked to respond at first, every last thought in her head grinding to a screeching halt as her world narrows down to the scrape of Daryl’s beard against her cheeks and chin and the wetness of his mouth as he moves it inexpertly over hers. But then he tangles his fingers in her greasy ponytail and pushes his tongue between her chapped lips, and it’s like one or both of those things flipped a switch inside her, because now her hands are flying up to frame his face as she scrambles to reciprocate.</p><p>Jesus. <em>Jesus</em>, she can’t believe this’s actually happening.</p><p>But it is. It is. That’s Daryl’s hand sinking deeper into her matted hair when she angles her head to drag her lips across his, and those are his calluses rubbing the nape of her neck raw. That’s his tongue in her mouth, wet and rough and sour, and she doesn’t even care how his breath tastes. <em>Hers</em> probably tastes like stale vomit, and <em>he’s</em> not complaining.</p><p>He groans against her mouth when she runs her tongue over his, and she smiles into their sloppy kiss because, no. He’s definitely not complaining at all.</p><p>But <em>she’s</em> got one complaint, at least, and it’s that she’s not nearly as close to him as she wants to be, an ache forming in her lower back as she holds her awkward sitting position on the bed, torso slanted forward to meet him, legs folded awkwardly beneath of her and prickling with pins and needles.</p><p>She shuffles blindly forward, knees bumping into his and probably bruising them both, and she makes a frustrated noise low in her throat, not wanting to break the kiss but also wanting to see where she’s going so she can <em>get to it</em>. She feels torn clean in half with indecision, but Daryl, as it turns out, has it covered.</p><p>Up till now, she had no idea what he was doing with his other hand, the one not all tangled in her hair, and she jumps a little when it reappears to smooth down her back, grabbing a handful of her ass and<em> hefting</em> her like she weighs nothing at all, ultimately settling her in his lap with her legs sprawled to either side of his hips, his dick pushing at her through his jeans.</p><p><em>Fuck</em>. Beth finally breaks the kiss, but only so she can gasp against his sweaty throat, fingers sliding into his hair and holding on tight. Feeling him against her leg was one thing, but this is different. This time, she knows he’s like this because he wants her, specifically, that it’s<em> not</em> just an involuntary reaction, and this time, he’s only a few layers of clothing away from pushing between her swollen pussy lips and sliding deep into her cunt.</p><p>Her hips bounce restlessly against his, and she gives another muted grunt of frustration. A few layers of clothing aren’t all that’s in the way. There’s the washcloth, too, thick and lumpy and keeping her from feeling as much of him as she could. She wants to yank it out of her underwear and fling it into the garbage; she doesn’t <em>care</em> if she bleeds the rest of the way through her only pair of panties if it means getting to ride the stiff line of Daryl’s dick until he comes, gasping, in his jeans.</p><p>“Hey.” Daryl taps her lightly on the ass, not quite a smack but still enough to make her bite almost clean through her lip, and even that can’t quite muffle her answering whimper. “Settle the fuck down. You want me to lose it, huh? That it?”</p><p>Actually, yes. Yes, that’s exactly what she wants. She sinks her teeth into the indents they left behind a second ago, this time to rein in her smile, and nods against Daryl’s shoulder. He taps her ass again, a little harder than before, and Beth’s heart almost pounds right out of her body through her cunt. She clings to his shoulders and hips, so turned on it<em> hurts</em>.</p><p>“Fuckin’ trouble,” Daryl grumbles, but he slurps his tongue up her neck after he says it, and Beth realizes that she can do the same to him, that she can lick him the way she wanted to last night, that she can lick him all over. So she <em>does</em>, panting against Daryl’s throat and feeling his pulse tremble under the hard push of her tongue.</p><p>Daryl’s temple knocks into hers when he shakes his head. He rubs his thumb against the dip of her back, up and down, pushing her waistband lower and lower with every pass. Beth’s thighs are starting to burn from the strain of being spread around his hips for so long, but like hell is she gonna get off of him. Not unless he wants her to.</p><p>“Hell’m I s’posed to do with you?” he asks, and sighs when Beth giggles, like he knows he walked right into that one. “Gonna give me a fuckin’ aneurism one’a these days.”</p><p>“You’re bein’ dramatic,” Beth whispers. She scrubs her fingers through his beard and presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth, mostly chaste but still more intimate than anything she’s ever done with anyone else, because it’s like she said. No one ever got her the way Daryl does. She never could’ve had something like this with anybody else.</p><p>“An’ you’re a goddamn pain in my ass,” Daryl reminds her, and then kisses her like he’s trying to preempt whatever smartass thing she might’ve said to that before she can say it.</p><p>She giggles again, both at the thought and at the tickle of his scruff against her skin, and Daryl catches every sound she makes with his mouth, like he thinks they’re precious and worth keeping. He kisses her and <em>kisses her</em>, still clumsy but getting better at it the more he does it, till she’s breathless and stupid and doesn’t even see it coming when he tenses beneath her and rolls them over so he’s on top, bearing her back against the bed. The springs squeal, and the headboard thunks against the wall.</p><p>He shoves up her shirt, and then her bra, bunching them both around her armpits as her breasts pop free and pucker up tight from the chill. There’s the shock of chill, and then there’s Daryl’s breath rolling hot across her skin, heralding his hotter tongue as it works her nipples into stiff, throbbing points. Her nails bite into his flanks, but only for a second, and then he grabs her wrists and pins them, stretching her arms out over her head.</p><p>“<em>Ungh</em>.” Beth gives a full-body twitch, hips lifting off the bed to rub against the jut of his cock. He rests more of his smothering weight on her then, like he’s trying to keep her still, and drags his wet rough tongue down the curve of her breast to nose his way into the crease of her underarm. He inhales through his open mouth and licks her at her there, tickling her so she jerks in his hold, like he’s just as enamored with her unwashed human smell as she is with his.</p><p>She shoves her hips against his again, more insistent this time, and cranes her neck to look down at him, at the dark top of his bent head as he snuffles at her like a wolf with its dinner. Her eyes catch on her own nipples, rising up red and stiff from the shallow white hills of her breasts, soaked with Daryl’s spit, and then she has to shut them, dropping her head back against the pillow with a groan. She wishes he’d let her hands go so she could touch herself, because as much as she wants him to do it for her, she doesn’t actually expect him to, not with her bleeding the way she is.</p><p>But then he does let go of her wrist. He lets it go, and before Beth can so much as think about shoving her hand into her underwear to rub her swollen clit, <em>his </em>hand’s cupping her between her legs, big enough to force her thighs farther apart, fingers prodding at her pussy lips through the washcloth. He cups her and <em>squeezes</em> her, and Beth jerks in his grip, panting, blindsided, cunt throbbing so hard she can feel it in her ears.</p><p>Daryl laps at the hollow of her throat, and when he groans, she can feel it humming in her windpipe. He takes his hand off of her, but only so he can tug at her waistband, tug it all the way <em>down</em>, and that’s when Beth takes his wrist in both of <em>her</em> hands, so confused she’s approaching panicked.</p><p>He lifts his head and blinks at her, face crumpling into a frown. His fingers twitch against her abdomen. “Don’t want me to?”</p><p>Beth squeezes her legs together. Oh, God, it’s definitely not that. She takes a deep breath that doesn’t do much to steady her and pushes up on her elbows, forcing Daryl to crawl back on his knees and press a hand against the mattress for balance, right by her hip. She tries not to stare too conspicuously at the obvious bulge in his pants.</p><p>“No, uh.” She licks her lips, and Daryl tracks the movement like he’s tracking a deer. “It’s just. I dunno if you remember this, but I’m sort of bleeding?”</p><p>Daryl’s frown deepens, then smooths out. He rolls his eyes and scoffs, the breath Beth just tasted on her tongue now buffeting her face.</p><p>“Christ,” he says, rough and dismissive like she’s deliberately testing his patience. “Who fuckin’ cares? Just lie back down an’ spread your damn legs.”</p><p>Beth breathes in, and she doesn’t breathe back out, spots dancing across her vision as her brain slowly starts to run out of oxygen. She knows she needs to exhale if she doesn’t wanna pass out right now, but she can’t seem to convince her lungs to work, like maybe they aren’t even there at all. Like Daryl just reached into her chest cavity and tore them right out.</p><p>Her lungs might not be working anymore, but other parts of her definitely are, cunt shivering into a contraction that soaks her makeshift pad with another wave of blood and slick. It occurs to her oxygen-deprived brain, then, that between the blood and her come, she’s wet enough for Daryl to fuck her without it hurting at all, even though he’s so much bigger than her, even though she felt for herself just <em>how </em>much bigger through their clothes. She could do it. She could take him. He probably wouldn’t even have to fuck her with his fingers first.</p><p>Her lungs finally expand, and she gulps air like she’s gulping water, lying down like Daryl told her to even though it’s not so much a voluntary reaction as it is her muscles just<em> liquifying</em> so she flops back against the pillow with a bounce, legs sprawled open and trembling like molds of jelly. </p><p>No sooner has she done as Daryl said than he’s hooking his fingers in her waistband and dragging her panties down her legs, bloody washcloth and all. Beth flushes and squirms when the smell hits her nose, but it doesn’t seem to bother Daryl one bit. No, his nostrils flare, and his mouth drops open like he’s trying to smell <em>more</em> of it.  </p><p>She whimpers softly and covers her eyes, overstimulated and overwhelmed, twitching when she smells the ghost of her own menstrual blood on her hand, the one she’d stuck in her underwear when she was trying to figure out if she’d wet herself in her sleep. She wrinkles her nose and starts to move her hands away from her face, only for Daryl to catch her wrists and do the rest of the job for her. His nostrils flare again, and he holds her hand up to his face, eyes narrowing down to speculative slits. She wonders if he can see the slivers of blood crusted under her nails.</p><p>And then she stops wondering about that, or anything else at all, when he sucks her three longest fingers into his mouth right down to the knuckle.</p><p>He’s trying to kill her—that’s the only rational explanation for any of this—but, Jesus, what a way to go.</p><p>He uses his tongue to push her fingers out of his mouth, and her hand flops down to rest against her stomach, sticky with his spit and wracked with fine tremors. It’s a God-given miracle that she can move at all in the state she’s in, but somehow, she manages, groping for his wrist with her clean hand and dragging<em> his</em> hand between her legs. The callused pads of his fingers graze her swollen pussy lips, and her cunt flexes like it’s trying to draw him in and gulp him down.</p><p>“C’mon.” She’s never heard herself sound like this before, like she just chain smoked through an entire pack of Daryl’s Marlboros. “C’mon, Daryl, please.”</p><p>She doesn’t know what she’s asking for—for him to fuck her, to lick her, to make her come any which way he wants—all she knows is that she <em>needs him to do it</em>.</p><p>And maybe he needs her too, because his eyes are wider than she’s ever seen them, dilated pupils eclipsing all but the thinnest slivers of blue. She’s not the only one who’s trembling. </p><p>“Don’t gotta ask,” he says, and he sounds just like she does, only she knows for a fact that he’s fresh out of cigarettes. Maybe it’s the woodsmoke that did that to him, and to her, but no. She knows that’s not true. She knows why they sound like this.</p><p>He angles his wrist and cups her like he had earlier, only this time there’s no underwear in the way, no washcloth, and his palm butts up against her lips with a gory squelch that makes her want to curl up like a pill bug and hide. But she can’t, she can’t do that, because the rough drag of Daryl’s palm against her clit made her legs kick out like he took a pair of rubber mallets to her knees, and he presses his left hand against her stomach to hold her still, to pin her down. She’s not going anywhere unless he lets her.</p><p>That probably shouldn’t turn her on as much as it does.</p><p>“Settle down, goddammit,” he mutters, rocking his palm against her clit even as he scolds her. Beth locks her muscles and tries to do as he said, because she’s afraid that he’ll stop if she doesn’t, but really, the both of them oughta know better.</p><p>Because there’s no chance in hell of her <em>settling down</em> so long as he’s got his hand between her legs, and even if there was, <em>that</em> gets tossed out the window when he stretches out on his stomach like he wants to get a look at her cunt from up close and just <em>pushes</em> his two longest fingers inside her, all the way up to the knuckle same as he sucked<em> her</em> fingers into his mouth.</p><p>Her pussy <em>drools</em> like a mouth, blood and come dripping out to pool around those scarred knuckles and dribble down the back of his hand. She makes a noise she’s never heard herself make before, a grunt so deep and guttural it could’ve come from <em>his</em> throat, hips shoving forward like they’ve got a mind of their own, cunt screwing up tight to suck him in. To gulp him down like it tried to earlier because she’s just so <em>hungry</em> for it. His fingers, his cock, she’ll take <em>anything</em> so long as it’s him who’s doing it to her.</p><p>She’s still holding onto his wrist, and her nails bite into the back of his hand when he pulls out of her without warning. His skin’s slick with her blood, his fingers dark with it.</p><p>“Hey.” She sounds annoyed and she doesn’t try to hide it. She never took Daryl for a tease, but that seems to be what he’s doing to her now. She tugs on his wrist. “What’re you—”</p><p>What was she going to say? She doesn’t know. Right now, she’d be hard pressed to remember her own name if someone asked, because Daryl just popped his bloody fingers into his mouth, cheeks hollowing as he sucks them clean like he just finished a meal and they’re covered in melted fat and grease. His eyelids flutter half shut, and he groans like Beth’s not the only one who’s hungry.</p><p>And Beth’s cunt clenches tight around nothing, because, yeah, he just sucked on her dirty fingers a minute ago, but that was different. There was hardly anything left on them; they were mostly clean but for the blood under her nails and maybe a musky aftertaste. But this. This is something else entirely. This is Daryl Dixon sucking her menstrual blood off his fingers and moaning low in his throat like he’s got a wet hand on his dick, like she’s a gourmet meal and somebody just served her up to him on a silver goddamn platter.</p><p>So she shouldn’t be all that surprised, really, when he pulls his fingers out of his mouth, licks her blood off his lips, and just up and shoves his face into her cunt.</p><p>Beth’s thighs slam shut around his head, and he grunts like it hurts—it probably does, and he’s probably gonna have a black eye to show for it—but he doesn’t pull back or let up. He just breaks her hold on his wrist and wraps both hands around her thighs, keeping her still. Spreading her open so he can work her over with his tongue.</p><p><em>His tongue</em>. Beth’s cunt flutters under the hard, insistent press of it, sensitive tissue flaring up from the sandpaper scrape of his beard. A solid pocket of air blocks off her throat so she can’t even swear out loud like she wants to, so all she can do is fight to breathe fast and shallow and <em>loud</em>, she’s so loud, she never was before but she is <em>now</em>, and when Daryl runs his tongue over her clit, harsh and sloppy, she sobs like she’s in pain.</p><p>But she’s not. Oh, God, she’s <em>not</em>.</p><p>He does it again, sweeps the broad flat of his tongue over her tingling clit, getting her wet cunt even wetter with the saliva that’s waterfalling out of his open mouth, and her fingers clench, nails cutting into the fleshy parts of her palms. She needs to hold onto something, wants to sink her fingers into his hair and pull, but she doesn’t know if he’d like that, is honestly afraid that it would be one of the worst possible things she could do to someone who grew up in an abusive household, so she tangles them in her own hair and yanks at it till her scalp stings and her eyes water instead.</p><p>Her hands are in her hair, and her feet are braced against Daryl’s shoulders, even though she doesn’t remember that happening. She can feel the muscles in his back rippling as his head bobs on his neck with every slow, hard lick. What she<em> can’t</em> feel are her own toes, curled so tight they’ve started to go numb, but she can’t get them to relax for the life of her. Her guts are balling themselves into a tighter and tighter fist, winding up for something huge, something she’s not sure she’s gonna survive.</p><p>“<em>Fuck</em>.” So she can talk, after all. She tugs on her hair and it strains at the roots, fit to snap. “Fuck, Daryl, <em>please</em>—”</p><p>She cuts her own self off with a squeal when he uses his grip on her thighs to lift her hips a couple inches off the bed, just far enough to slap her on the ass, and she thinks of what he said about how nobody was gonna spank her for cussing, and she whimpers like a wounded animal.</p><p>“<em>Ugh</em>.” He’s still holding her to his face, big hands spread to palm her ass and keep her close, and her fingers slip out of her hair to snarl in the sheets. The tears in her eyes are falling down her cheeks and into her mouth, coating her lips in the taste of salt. “Daryl,<em> fuck</em>, c’mon.”</p><p>She knows what she’s doing, and she’s braced for it when he spanks her again. Her ass feels hot, and she knows if she walked up to the bathroom mirror and turned around, bent herself over, she’d see a lurid red mark on her skin in the shape of his hand.</p><p>But she’s not going anywhere unless he wants her to, remember? His fingers are digging into her sore ass, tongue slurping at her clit, blood and come and spit dribbling down her inner thighs and between her cheeks, pooling underneath of her in a small puddle and staining the bed. With no housekeeping around to wash it out, that stain’s gonna last forever, long after Beth and Daryl have moved on. People are gonna look at it and wonder if someone died in here, and maybe they’d be right, in a sense. Beth certainly<em> feels</em> like she’s in her death throes, or what she imagines they’d feel like.</p><p>But she’s not dying, even if her body’s trying to trick her into thinking that she is. She’s still alive.</p><p>Daryl’s eating her alive.</p><p>And she didn’t think he could delve any deeper into her cunt than he already has without suffocating, but this’s Daryl Dixon she’s talking about, so of course he finds a way because he’s just that <em>stubborn</em>. He buries his mouth and nose in her cunt, shallow breaths bursting out of him to scorch her pussy lips, and rolls his tongue over her clit in a way that gets her sobbing again, the bedspread bunching in her fists. She squirms farther up the bed, breaking the seal of his mouth on her cunt with a wet smack, but she doesn’t get far. Daryl wraps his hands around her thighs again and yanks her back with a thwarted snarl, and her stomach swoops like she just went over the peak on a rollercoaster. Swoops again like there was a second hill she didn’t see coming when she gets a look at his face.</p><p>God, his <em>face</em>.</p><p>His overgrown bangs are hanging in his eyes and obscuring whatever she might’ve seen in them, but she can see the lower half of his face just fine, can get a perfectly good look at it, and it <em>looks</em> like he’s been eating venison raw.</p><p>Her menstrual blood’s smeared all over his jaw, covering him from just below his nose to the blunt jut of his chin. It glues his beard to his face, gleams on his mouth like lipstick, dark red in some places and almost black in others, hanging off his cheeks in thin, gory ropes. As Beth looks on, hardly able to breathe, he sticks out his tongue and rolls it over his bottom lip.</p><p>“Hell you think you’re goin’?” he grumbles, voice hoarse from eating her, and yanks her even closer, yanks her thighs <em>apart</em> till they strain, till she can see her own pussy lips gaping open through the bloodied thicket of her pubic hair. “C’mere.”</p><p><em>I already </em>am<em> here</em>, Beth wants to say, but there’s no saying anything at all, let alone in complete sentences, when Daryl dives back into her cunt with a noise she’s gonna be hearing in her dreams for the rest of her life, however long that may last.</p><p><em>Hungry</em>, he’s so hungry, tonguing her open and lapping up the blood and come that gushes out of her pussy and into his panting mouth. And it all comes back to hunger, doesn’t it? No matter how much raw, steaming meat they stuff themselves with, the walkers that roam right outside their motel door will never stop being hungry, and neither will the people they hunt. This is a starving world they’re living in, so of course Daryl would want to eat her like this, raw and bloody like uncooked meat. Beth understands, because there’s a part of her that wants to set her teeth to his thundering pulse and eat him, too.</p><p>And it’s fucked up, it’s so fucked up, but she comes on the heels of that thought, comes all over Daryl’s <em>mouth</em>, cunt rippling into an orgasm that she can feel in the very tips of her fingers, in the base of her spine and the flex and curl of her clenched toes. Her hips shudder against Daryl’s face, thighs straining in his grip, and he holds her through it, holds her still, holds her down so he can have his fill of her. So he can soothe the pang of hunger in his stomach, if only for a little while.</p><p>She’s a whimpering, throbbing mess by the time he takes mercy on her and lets up, just a quivering puddle of blood and sweat and come, brain a useless hunk of meat in her skull. Her eyelids are as good as leaded weights, but she still manages to slit them halfway open, and just in time to watch Daryl prop himself up on one elbow and wipe the back of his hand across his mouth. All it really does is smear the blood on his face around and get some on his hand, too, but it’s not like they’ve got wet wipes at their disposal, and Daryl doesn’t seem to mind the mess, anyway.</p><p>An aftershock ripples through her, makes her pussy lips clench and her clit tingle. No. No, he definitely doesn’t.</p><p>She must make some kind of noise. Must do something, because then he cocks his head like a curious animal and squints at her, absentmindedly licking what’s left of her blood off his lips. He runs rough fingers over her clit, making her feet twitch and curl against his sides, before pushing two inside of her and scissoring them apart. Her cunt clenches around him and pushes out another stream of blood and come, and he presses his forehead against her hip and <em>groans</em>.</p><p>And Beth. Beth just came, but her stomach gives a giddy jump like she’s ready to come again, because she hasn’t even gotten her hand around his dick yet and he’s reacting like <em>that</em>. How’s it gonna be when he actually fucks her?</p><p><em>If</em> he fucks her. She should probably ask first.</p><p>Beth runs her fingers through his sweaty hair and taps his cheek to get his attention. He rolls his face against her thigh, smearing her own blood in sticky tracks across her skin, and looks up at her wordlessly through narrow, glimmering eyes.</p><p>Okay. <em>Okay</em>. Beth licks her lips, but it doesn’t do her much good, because her mouth’s bone dry. Probably because all the water in her body’s draining out of her through her cunt.</p><p>“Hey, uh.” God, she sounds awful, like she’s coming down with strep. Still, she has to get this out, so she keeps going even though talking makes her throat ache. “Can we—d’you wanna—”</p><p>“Can I fuck you?”</p><p>“Oh, God.” Beth feels like someone just reached into her torso and yanked out her guts, hollowing her out to make room for what hearing him say that makes her feel. To make room for his <em>dick</em>. She gropes for him, fingers catching in his shirt and <em>pulling</em>, trying to yank him on top of her. “Yeah, <em>Jesus</em>, c’mon, c’mere.”</p><p>She doesn’t need to tell him twice. He climbs up the length of her body, just as clumsy and eager as she is, while she whips her shirt and bra the rest of the way off because she doesn’t want <em>anything</em> between him and her bare skin. He fumbles with his belt and then his zip, swearing under his breath like he’s just that desperate to get inside her, <em>God</em>, but he pauses when she goes for his shirt’s buttons. <em>Freezes</em>, actually, wary as a cornered animal.</p><p>Beth swallows convulsively, wondering if she’s finally fucked up for real, but she doesn’t move her hands. She knows about Daryl’s scars, and he probably knows that <em>she</em> knows about them, but that doesn’t mean he wants her touching them. He might want to fuck her, but that doesn’t mean he wants to be <em>vulnerable</em> with her.</p><p>“It’s okay,” Beth whispers, and she means it’s okay if he wants to and it’s okay if he doesn’t. She never took her bracelets off around Zach, never let him touch her own scar. Wouldn’t’ve let Jimmy touch it, either, if he’d ever expressed any interest in doing so. She’s not gonna fault Daryl for protecting this part of himself, too.</p><p>But Daryl. Daryl must trust her in a way she never trusted Jimmy or Zach, because he unbuttons his shirt, quick like he’s trying to get it over with before he changes his mind, and shrugs it off. Tosses it into the pile alongside her shirt and bra and bloody underwear. Beth sighs, quietly, and runs light hands down his chest, over his abdomen. His stomach twitches when she does that, and then twitches again when she smooths her palm over the bulge in his jeans. He twitches, and makes a noise low in his throat that almost sounds wounded, like she’s hurting him.</p><p>But she knows she’s not.</p><p>His belt’s hanging open, and his button’s undone, so all that’s left for her to do is tug down his zipper, and, Jesus. Jesus, she was right about him not having any underwear on, because his dick falls out of his pants as soon as she parts his zipper’s teeth, thick and wet and pounding with blood, so much blood, as much blood as there is leaking out from between her legs.</p><p>Blood. She’s bleeding, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that what they’re doing here is safe. The chances of her getting pregnant are slim, but they’re not nonexistent, either. She should probably care about that, especially after what happened to Lori—God, Lori, <em>Judith</em>—and she <em>does</em> care, vaguely and distantly. It’s just that she doesn’t care <em>enough.</em></p><p>She’s already survived more than most people would’ve expected of her. She’ll survive this too, no matter what happens, and she knows she’s gonna regret it if she dies without ever getting to feel Daryl’s dick inside her.</p><p>She runs her fingers up his shaft, and he makes another one of those hurting noises, biting his lower lip like he’s trying to contain it. Pre-come bubbles up at his slit and drips down his head, pools around her knuckles. She can feel his veins throbbing under the pads of her fingers, throbbing like open wounds. Throbbing like her empty pussy.</p><p>“C’mon,” she repeats, letting go of his dick just to push his jeans further down his hips. She moves her legs, spreading them and drawing them back so her knees are pointed at the ceiling, so her pussy gapes open wide. Daryl can’t seem to decide where to look—at her face or her tits or that red, bleeding gash—and Beth gets that, because there’s so much of <em>him</em> that she wants to look at, and she feels like she’ll never have enough time to do it. Even in a different, gentler world, she’d probably still feel that way.</p><p>“C’mon,” she says for the third time, running light hands up his back, over the webwork of scar tissue, before curling them over his shoulders. She tugs on him, insistent, and he drops that big heavy body down on top of hers, crushing her into the mattress. His dick slaps her cunt, and she braces her feet against the mattress and shoves her hips forward to ride his shaft. “C’mon, Daryl, c’mere.”</p><p>His breath bursts hot across her face, his sticky beard scratches her cheek, and she can smell herself on him. The thick musk of it smells better on him, somehow, than it does on her, and when she presses her mouth to his to taste more of it, he groans down deep in his chest and sinks into her cunt.</p><p>Beth nearly bites her tongue in half, her entire body seizing up around Daryl’s as it fights to adjust to the shock of penetration, the ligaments in her hips and thighs singing from the strain of it. She feels Daryl’s shoulders flex under her palms when he bows his head, and she knows he’s doing it because he’s fighting, too. She felt his dick jerk when he pushed it inside of her, and she knows he’s trying not to come.</p><p>“<em>Daryl</em>.” She thinks she gags a little, like she’s taken his cock down her throat instead of up her cunt. It <em>feels</em> like he’s touching the back of her throat, anyway, like he really has burrowed that deep. Her thighs bounce against his hips, heels pushing his jeans further down his ass. “<em>Daryl</em>, c’mon.”</p><p>She’s forgotten how to say anything else. There’s just his name and the demand for<em> more</em>.</p><p>He doesn’t seem to be any better off, at least. His fingers snag in her hair where it’s spread across the pillow, and he’s trembling so hard it’s making <em>her</em> shake even harder. His hips twitch, pushing his cock impossibly deeper into her cunt, but she doesn’t think he did it on purpose.</p><p>“<em>Fuck</em>, Beth.” He pushes his hips forward again, shoving her several inches up the bed and making the headboard clap against the wall. He bares his teeth against her throat. “I’m gonna—fuck.”</p><p>“Shhh.” She smooths her hands up and down his heaving back, tries to get the muscles in her cunt to relax so she’s not squeezing him quite so tight. She presses her face to the top of his head and inhales his sweat. “Shhh, it’s okay.”</p><p>His nose butts up against her collarbone when he shakes his head. When he talks, his voice comes out thin and shaky with panic. “You’re just so fuckin’ <em>wet</em>, Christ.”</p><p>She<em> is</em>. Oh, God, she really is. She’s dripping in rivulets down her thighs to drench the bed, seeping through the sheets to stain the mattress. Every uneven push of Daryl’s hips is accompanied by a squelch, his cock stuffing her blood and come back up her cunt to slick the way so each subsequent thrust is smoother than the last, stroking raw nerves and inflaming sensitive tissue, fucking her toward a fever pitch.</p><p>She thrashes like a wild thing beneath him, legs sawing through the crumpled blankets, nails cutting new lines into his back to overlap the old scars. He’s found something approaching a rhythm now, fucking her hard and steady so she can hear the headboard banging against the wall in time with the pulse thudding in her ears. He’s so much bigger than her, not just his cock but his thick arms and wide shoulders and heavy hips, and he’s taking all the strength in his body and driving it into <em>her</em>. Beth’s heard about getting your brains fucked out, and now, for the first time in her very short sexual history, she thinks she’s gonna experience it for herself.</p><p>She probably won’t get to enjoy it as much if he really does crush her ribs, though, and that thought must occur to him too, because he braces his elbows against the squealing mattress and takes on more of his own weight, easing some of the pressure from her lungs. Even then, he still surrounds her, not just with his arms but with his smell, sinking into her pores along with his sweat as it drips off his face, and he’s still close enough for the hair on his chest to scratch her nipples and make them go as puffy and red as her cunt.</p><p><em>Her cunt</em>. Beth cranes her neck to look, she’s got to look, she has to see his cock thrusting into her, red and wet and thick. She only gets a glimpse of it, though, just a flash of her pussy lips gaping open around his shaft, before she has to shut her eyes and drop her back against the pillow, overwhelmed. Daryl’s lips touch her exposed throat, then seal themselves over her pulse point and suck a bruise there, the sound of him suckling at her almost as loud in her ears as the wet pop of his dick in her cunt.</p><p>Almost, but not quite, and it’s so <em>obscene</em>, that sound, even gorier than the noises his mouth had made on her. Beth thinks she could come from that sound alone, and from the drag of Daryl’s dick across the back of her clit, but she knows deep down that neither of those things will be enough, that she needs spit and fingers and <em>friction</em>, so she pushes her hand between them only for Daryl’s hand to beat her to it.</p><p>“C’mon, Beth.” His thumb scrapes her clit while his other hand cups her face and holds her still so he can kiss her, so she can run her tongue over the drying blood on his lips. “Want you to come first, <em>fuck</em>, c’mon.”</p><p>She wants to tell him that it doesn’t matter either way, that she wants to feel<em> him </em>come almost as badly as she wants to come herself, but the words leave her as an incoherent groan, her eyes rolling back in her skull as her body does what he wants it to and <em>comes</em>, twitching, thighs locking tight against his flanks and holding him to her, inside of her, when his own orgasm bursts out of his dick and into her cunt.</p><p>The prison, the country club, the moonshine shack, all of it—all of it leaves her for one bright, searing moment, and she’s unburdened, reborn, <em>baptized</em>. All that’s left is this. Them.</p><p>She knows it won’t last. She knows the dead still walk outside. But so long as she can take comfort in Daryl for a few moments at a time, then, really, isn’t that the most she could think to ask for?</p><p>She goes boneless, then, and so does he, bodies glued together with blood and sweat and come. She can feel him dripping out of her, hot and thick, and she shudders so hard her teeth rattle.</p><p>Daryl swears under his breath and pushes up on his elbows, peeling himself off of her with a tacky sound. He looks down between her legs and swears again.</p><p>“Fuck, Beth, I’m—”</p><p>“<em>Don’t</em> say you’re sorry.” He looks up at her, startled, and she answers him with a stern frown. “Seriously, don’t. It’ll be fine.”</p><p>He chews on his lower lip. It’s swollen soft and red from kissing her. “Still,” he eventually mumbles. “Should find you some Plan B or whatever.”</p><p>Some point of tension inside of her that she hadn’t even noticed was there slowly unwinds. She was terrified, she realizes. Terrified that he was gonna be weird about this and retreat from her again. And maybe he will be, a little, because it’s Daryl. But she doesn’t think he’ll stop talking to her, either.</p><p>No. Whatever they are to each other now, she’s pretty sure they’ll only go forward, not back.</p><p>Daryl eases off of her, a thin stream of come still leaking from the head of his dick, and flops onto his side. Beth bites back a smile, because she’s not the only one who’s bloody now.</p><p>His fingers graze her breast before settling over her heart. She folds her hand over his, her own drying blood rough against her palm, and nuzzles her face into his throat.</p><p>She still has to ask. Just to be sure.</p><p>“You gonna be weird about this?”</p><p>His hand twitches. He’s silent for a moment, then says, “Depends. Are you?”</p><p>She grins in earnest. Kisses the sticky underside of his jaw. “Nah.”</p><p>“Alright.” He clears his throat. “Good.”</p><p>Beth lets another minute slip past while their breathing gradually evens out. “You should get cleaned up, you still wanna head out in a while.”</p><p>He snorts. “Yeah? With what? Ain’t no runnin’ water ’round here.”  </p><p>Beth rolls her tongue around her mouth, tasting salt and copper. She presses her answering smile to his lips.</p><p>“I’m sure we’ll figure somethin’ out.”</p>
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